This bulging at the equator and flattening towards the poles afford the most direct proofs, that can be adduced, of the original liquid state of our planet. A solid and non-elastic sphere--a stone ball, for example--might turn for ages upon its axis, and its form would sustain no change; but a fluid ball, or one of a pasty consistence, would swell out towards the middle, and, in the same proportion, become flattened at the extremities of its axis. It was upon this principle, namely, by admitting the primitive fluidity of the globe, that Newton announced _à priori_ the bulging of the globe at the equator and its flattening at the poles; and he even calculated the amount of this depression. The actual measurement, both of this expansion and flattening, by Maupertuis, Clairaut, Camus, and Lemonnier, in 1736, proved how exact the calculations of the great geometrican were. Those gentlemen, together with the Abbé Outhier, were sent into Lapland by the Academy of Sciences; the Swedish astronomer, Celsius, accompanied them, and furnished them with the best instruments for measuring and surveying. At the same time the Academy sent Bouguer and Condamine to the equatorial regions of South America. The measurements taken in both these regions established the existence of the equatorial expansion and the polar depression, as Newton had estimated it to be in his calculations. It does not follow, as a consequence of the partial cooling down of the terrestrial mass, that all the gaseous substances composing it should pass into a liquid state; some of these might remain in the state of gas or vapour, and form round the terrestrial spheroid an outer envelope or _atmosphere_ (from the Greek words ατμος, _vapour_, and σφαιρα, _sphere_). But we should form a very inexact idea of the atmosphere which surrounded the globe, at this remote period, if we compared it with that which surrounds it now. The extent of the gaseous matter which enveloped the primitive earth must have been immense; it doubtless extended to the moon. It included, in short, in the state of vapour, the enormous body of water which, as such, now constitutes our existing seas, added to all the other substances which preserve their gaseous state at the temperature then exhibited by the incandescent earth; and it is certainly no exaggeration to place this temperature at 2,000° Centigrade. The atmosphere would participate in this temperature; and acted on by such excessive heat, the pressure that it would exert on the Earth would be infinitely greater than that which it exercises at the present time. To the gases which form the component parts of the present atmospheric air--namely, nitrogen, oxygen, and carbonic acid--to enormous masses of watery vapour, must be added vast quantities of mineral substances, metallic or earthy, reduced to a gaseous state, and maintained in that state by the temperature of this gigantic furnace. The metals, the chlorides--metallic, alkaline, and earthy--sulphur, the